Welcome to the Deep Dive. We're really glad you're
here with us today. Yeah, absolutely. If you
are listening to this right now, I know exactly
who you are. You're the kind of person who wants
to understand how the world actually works. But
you don't want to drown in just, you know, endless
data to get there. Right, exactly. You want the
synthesis. You want those aha moments. A clear,
engaging look at complex topics without feeling
overwhelmed by all the noise. And you are definitely
in the exact right place for that today. We really
have a fascinating journey mapped out for you.
The mission for today's deep dive is to unpack
a masterclass in modern leadership. We're looking
at the life and career of an American businessman
named Rich Lesser. Which is such an interesting
trajectory to follow. It really is. We are going
to trace how a person goes from being a product
development engineer all the way to becoming
the global chair of the Boston Consulting Group.
BCG. BCG, yeah. Which is undeniably one of the
most powerful and influential management consulting
firms. OK, let's unpack this because this is
not just a standard corporate biography. No,
not at all. When you really look at the milestones
of his career, what you're actually looking at
is a blueprint. It's a roadmap of how global
leadership, corporate responsibility and business
strategy have fundamentally transformed over
the last three decades. It really is a mirror
reflecting the changing global landscape. What
we're going to trace today. Through the lens
of this one individual's career is the evolution
of the modern CEO. Right. We're looking at the
shift from a traditional. pure business strategist,
someone entirely focused on margins and market
share. The classic spreadsheet guy. Exactly.
The shift from that to a highly complex figure
who has to navigate global pandemics, climate
change, and incredibly dense political spheres.
The job description has completely changed, and
this trajectory maps that change perfectly. So
let's start right at the beginning, because the
context of where someone starts often defines
how they view the board later in the game. Lesser
was born in 1962. he grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
during the 1970s. Which is a very specific era
for that city. Very specific. For those who know
their American industrial history, 1970s Pittsburgh
is a crucible. This was a time of severe economic
hardship for the city due to the collapse of
the steel industry. You have a massive, historically
dominant industry just completely unraveling
in real time. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, growing up, Amidst that kind of systemic
industrial collapse is going to leave a profound
mark on how you understand business. I would
imagine so. Right. Because when you watch the
undisputed titans of industry fail. The steel
mills that literally built the modern infrastructure
of the country. Right. Just shuttering their
doors. Exactly. You learn a hard lesson very
early on. You learn about structural business
vulnerabilities. Yeah. You see firsthand that
an entire regional economy can be hollowed out
if a monolithic industry fails to recognize global
market shifts. It instills an understanding that
adaptability isn't just a corporate buzzword.
It's an absolute requirement for survival. Exactly.
No institution is too big to fail. And that adaptability
is exactly what we see next in his academic path.
He goes to the University of Michigan and earns
a bachelor's degree. Right. But he doesn't just
get a general business degree. He gets a degree
in chemical engineering, graduating summa cum
laude. Which is no small feat. No, not at all.
And his very first career step isn't in a boardroom.
He starts as a product development engineer and
a group leader at Procter & Gamble. A chemical
engineer making soap and consumer products. Yeah.
It's a fascinating starting point for someone
who will eventually lead global corporate strategy.
I completely agree, but I have to play devil's
advocate here for a second. Making soap at P
&G is very different from advising a Fortune
500 bank on their corporate structure. Fair point.
How does a chemical engineer actually translate
those skills to human organizations? It is a
great question, and it really comes down to systems
thinking. What is chemical engineering at its
core? It's the science of understanding how highly
volatile elements interact with one another under
extreme pressure, you know, under specific conditions
to create a stable, valuable product. Yeah. If
one pressure valve fails, the whole system blows.
Wow. Okay. Corporate strategy is exactly the
same thing. You are taking volatile markets,
unpredictable consumer behaviors, fragile supply
chains, and high -pressure economic conditions,
and you are trying to engineer a stable, profitable
outcome. That makes a lot of sense. You have
to understand the entire system and how moving
one variable changes the whole reaction. Engineers
look for root causes, they optimize processes,
and they build structures designed to withstand
massive stress. He is taking an engineer's mindset
and preparing to apply it to global markets.
Exactly. And from that foundation, he makes the
pivot. He heads to Harvard Business School, where
he doesn't just graduate. He becomes a Baker
Scholar. Which is an extremely high academic
distinction there. Right. This completely sets
the stage for his leap into the world of consulting.
By 1988, he joins the Boston Consulting Group.
And just to ground us, because the consulting
world can seem a bit opaque sometimes. Traditional
management consulting in the late 80s was largely
about efficiency. A company brings in a bunch
of smart MBAs in suits to look at their operations,
tell them where they are bleeding money, and
suggest how to reorganize their hierarchy. Very
spreadsheet heavy. Very traditional. Exactly.
The classic model was essentially, hey, hire
us and we will tell you how to cut 10 % of your
operating costs so your quarterly earnings look
better. Right. But when Lesser joins BCG, he
starts applying that system's thinking. to client
work, specifically focusing on strategy, operations,
leadership and large scale transformation. So
he isn't just looking at the spreadsheet. No,
he is looking at the structural integrity of
the entire company. And he steadily climbs the
ranks over the next two decades. He leads the
New York Metro office from 2000 to 2009. He gets
elected to the firm's executive committee in
2006. Then he serves as chairman for North and
South America from 2009 to 2012. Yeah. But there's
an anomaly in the timeline here. that really
caught my eye 2008 the global financial crisis
the great recession right it's totally counterintuitive
but bcg actually grew strongly through that devastating
recession and lesser played a pivotal role in
making them the only global management consulting
firm to do so i have to admit i get incredibly
excited about this specific nuance i can tell
because it defies all conventional business logic
think about what happens during a massive global
economic crash credit freezes Banks collapse.
Everyone panics. Everyone panics. The very first
thing companies do is slash discretionary spending.
And historically, bringing in outside management
consultants was viewed by many as a luxury expense.
Right. If you're bleeding cash, you fire the
consultants first. Exactly. To not just survive,
but to grow strongly when the global economy
is in freefall requires a fundamental shift in
what you are selling to your clients. So why
on earth would a massive retailer or a struggling
bank hire BCG in October of 2008? Because of
what Lesser had been focusing on. large scale
transformation. Let's look at a hypothetical
scenario. Say you are the CEO of a massive logistics
company in 2008. Your supply chain is collapsing.
Your lines of credit just vanished and you might
not make payroll next month. You don't need a
25 year old MBA giving you a PowerPoint presentation
on synergistic brand alignment. Definitely not.
You need an engineer to come in and fundamentally
restructure your toxic assets and salvage your
core operations so you don't go bankrupt. Wow.
So Lesser's focus likely positioned BCG not as
a luxury to help companies tweak their margins,
but as an absolute lifeline. He was taking that
engineer's mindset of structural integrity and
applying it to companies that were structurally
collapsing. He made BCG's services a necessary
survival tool rather than an expendable luxury.
That ability to prove your value in the darkest
economic times clearly paid off because in May
2012, Lesser was elected to succeed Hans Paul
Berkner as the global chief executive officer
of the Boston Consulting Group. He officially
served in that CEO role from 2013 to 2021. And
here's where it gets really interesting. Let's
look at the numbers because they reflect a massive
strategic pivot. During his time as CEO, he didn't
just grow the firm. He more than doubled its
size to over 22 ,000 employees. Wow. And he tripled
its revenue. Those numbers are astronomical for
a firm that was already considered an established
giant in the industry. You don't triple the revenue
of a legacy behemoth just by hiring more consultants
to do the same old things. So how do you do it?
Well, what is critical to understand here is
the mechanics of that expansion. This was a fundamental
diversification of the entire firm's capabilities.
He essentially looked at where the global economy
was going to be in 10 years and built the infrastructure
for it ahead of time. Let's unpack exactly how
he did that, because he started launching completely
new specialized units within the firm. First,
there was BCG Digital Ventures. Now, traditional
consultants would just advise a company on their
digital strategy. But Digital Ventures was set
up as a builder and accelerator of digital businesses.
Right. So instead of just handing a client a
report that says, hey, you need an app to compete,
BCG Digital Ventures would actually partner with
them to build the app, launch the digital platform
and accelerate that specific business unit. They
moved from purely advising to actively building.
Exactly. That is a massive operational shift
that blurs the line between a consulting firm
and a tech incubator. But he didn't stop at digital
products. He also saw the data wave coming, which
brings us to BCG Gamma. This was a dedicated
analytics and machine learning team. And we really
need to pause on this one. Integrating a dedicated
machine learning and AI team into a traditional
management consulting firm back in the mid -2010s
was incredibly early and absolutely crucial.
Way before it was trendy. This was long before
tools like ChatGPT made AI a household talking
point. He recognized before many of his competitors
that big data and predictive analytics were going
to fundamentally disrupt every single industry,
from healthcare to logistics. So by building
BCG Gamma, he ensured the firm wasn't just reacting
to the AI wave, they were writing it. If a company
wanted to know how algorithm -driven pricing
could save their margins, BCG suddenly had the
world -class data scientists in -house to build
that model. It's brilliant. Next, he launched
BCG Turn. This was a specialized turnaround,
restructuring, and transformation unit. Which
perfectly institutionalizes the exact skills
that helped them survive the 2008 recession.
He took that crisis survival mechanism, the ability
to parachute into a failing company and restructure
it from the ground up, and built an entire formal
unit around it. So when the next crisis hits,
they have a dedicated SWAT team ready to deploy.
And more recently, he oversaw the creation of
the Center for Climate and Sustainability. Which
signals a massive paradigm shift. It is a recognition
that climate impact is no longer just an environmental
issue relegated to the corporate social responsibility
department. Right. It is a core business strategy
issue. Every major corporation on Earth now has
to account for carbon taxes, supply chain vulnerabilities
due to extreme weather, and consumer demands
for green practices. I want you listening right
now to just imagine. trying to steer a massive
traditional corporate ship into the digital age,
the AI age, and the age of climate accountability.
all at the exact same time. It's a lot. The sheer
scale of operational agility required to launch
these completely distinct arms, bringing in software
developers, data scientists, and climate experts
to work alongside traditional MBAs is staggering.
Oh, absolutely. And doing all of this while managing
over 22 ,000 employees. But he clearly managed
the internal culture well during this massive
scale -up, because in 2021, Lesser was named
the top CEO in America by Glassdoor. That is
an award based entirely on anonymous employee
feedback. It is incredibly difficult to push
a company through aggressive systemic transformation
without breaking the culture of the organization.
Change usually breeds massive internal resistance.
Yeah, people hate change. Exactly. Again, it
is that chemical engineer's touch. Yeah. Managing
high pressure without letting the system explode.
In 2021, lesser transition from CEO to the role
of global chair. And this transition really marks
our entry into the final major theme of his career,
which is the role of the modern executive in
the public sphere and in driving social impact.
He moved way beyond the traditional corporate
balance sheet. This is the evolution we talked
about at the very beginning. The job of a global
executive is no longer just about delivering
returns to the shareholders. It is about managing
an incredibly complex web of global stakeholders.
When you look at his trajectory as global chair,
you see a massive acceleration in social investments
through major global partnerships. We are talking
about formal collaborations with the World Food
Program, Save the Children, and the World Wildlife
Fund. These are complex, massive, non -governmental
organizations dealing with humanity's most severe
crises. Famine, child welfare, ecological collapse.
A global consultancy partnering with them shows
a blending of corporate logistical capability
with profound humanitarian need. They're applying
that same systems engineering mindset to global
crises. He also focused heavily on domestic social
issues. He oversaw the launch of the Southern
Communities Initiative. This is a coalition involving
BCG, PayPal and Vista equity partners specifically
designed to help advance racial equity in southern
U .S. communities. Which demonstrates an understanding
that corporate leaders are increasingly expected
to leverage their capital, their networks and
their resources to address systemic social inequities,
not just economic ones. Right. The modern public
demands that these massive corporations take
a stance and actually do something about structural
inequality. And the level at which he is navigating
global crises and public policy is intense. Listen
to this list of external roles he took on. He
is the chief advisor to the World Economic Forum's
Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders. He was previously
a member of the WEF's International Business
Council. He serves on the board of directors
of the Business Roundtable, where he specifically
served as the chair of the CEO COVID -19 Task
Force. And he is a member of the President's
Export Council. What's fascinating here is the
absolute tightrope that modern CEOs have to walk.
Look at the breadth of those roles. They are
no longer just business operators optimizing
global supply chains. They really aren't. They're
expected to act as public health coordinators,
as we saw with the COVID task force, literally
figuring out how to keep the global economy functioning
during a deadly pandemic. Right. They're expected
to be global climate advocates, as seen with
his role at the World Economic Forum. And they
are expected to act almost as diplomatic or political
advisors on international trade. And when you
are operating at that higher level, intersecting
with public policy, you inevitably... intersect
with polarized politics. Looking at the timeline,
there is a very clear factual record regarding
his involvement with the Trump administration.
In December 2016, Lesser joined a business forum
assembled by then president elect Donald Trump.
Right. The stated purpose of this forum was to
provide strategic and policy advice on economic
issues. Then a few months later in August 2017,
Lesser and other CEOs collectively decided to
disband the group. This really highlights the
sheer pressure of the position. Every single
move, every council joined, and every statement
made is heavily scrutinized. They have to navigate
highly polarized, rapidly shifting political
climates on a national and global stage. They
are answering not just to their board of directors,
but to the media, to their thousands of employees,
and to the general public. It is a tremendous
amount of weight to carry. And when you look
at that punishing schedule, advising presidents,
navigating global pandemics, restructuring economies
and running a 22000 person firm, it's worth noting
that he was doing all of this while raising a
family. He is married and has three children.
Wow. It really highlights the sheer bandwidth
and extreme personal demands required to be a
modern global executive. It is an all consuming
reality. Absolutely. It is an important grounding
detail. The physical and mental stamina required
to operate at that intersection of global business
and public policy while maintaining a personal
life is frankly difficult to comprehend. So what
does this all mean? When we synthesize this entire
journey, we can trace a direct logical through
line. We started with a kid in 1970s Pittsburgh
watching the mighty steel industry collapse because
it couldn't adapt to changing realities. We saw
that kid become a chemical engineer, learning
how to manage volatile interconnected systems
under extreme pressure. And we saw that exact
mindset scale up to become a CEO who steered
a massive global consulting firm through the
2008 financial crisis, a total digital and AI
revolution, and a global pandemic. And he didn't
just survive those events. He constantly... evolve
the structural capabilities of his firm to meet
them head on. Exactly. The ultimate takeaway
for me is about how we process information and
anticipate change. Lesser's career proved that
in our current era of constant rapid disruption,
the most successful leaders aren't just the ones
who have memorized the most facts or hold the
tightest conclusions. They are the ones who can
spot the underlying patterns before anyone else.
They're the ones who can restructure their organizations
quickly. They build the new tools. like machine
learning teams, digital incubators, and climate
sustainability centers, long before the market
forces them to. They build the lifeboats while
the ship is still sailing smoothly. That is the
absolute essence of true strategy. Exactly. But
this raises an important question, one that goes
beyond just business strategy and touches on
the very fabric of our society. As we see business
leaders like Lesser increasingly step into roles
that were traditionally held almost exclusively
by elected policymakers, chairing global COVID
task forces, leading international climate alliances,
driving massive racial equity initiatives, we
really have to ask ourselves, in the 21st century,
who is ultimately shaping the structural future
of our global society? Is it our elected officials
or is it our corporate executives? Wow, that
is exactly the kind of question we want to leave
you with today. It completely shifts how you
read the news and how you view the leaders of
these massive organizations. Thank you so much
for joining us on this deep dive. We hope you
walk away with a clearer understanding of how
the corporate world has evolved, and we encourage
you to keep questioning the structures of the
organizations that shape our world. Until next
time.